FilmJuly 14, 2018San Francisco,
With 67 films from 23 countries, this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival--the 38th--remains the world's largest, and, of course, still the oldest.
And, by the way, 53% of the films are directed ...

FeaturesMay 22, 2018San Francisco,
It started in 1996 with three silent films in one day; this year, the now almost-venerable festival will present twenty-three programs over five days (one more day than last year), May 30th to June 3rd.
As ...

FilmJanuary 24, 2018San Francisco,
By now, Bay Area folks might be feeling the urge for a film festival: the San Francisco International fest doesn't come till April, and for the Silent Film Festival and Jewish Film Festival--to name just a few of our area's ...

FilmJuly 1, 2017San Francisco,
When I wrote an article on Jewish film festivals for Hadassah magazine 14 years ago, the San Francisco Jewish film festival was the oldest and the largest anywhere.
Of course it's still the oldest; and--guess what?--it's still the largest.
...

FilmJune 10, 2017
Everybody has heard of T. E. Lawrence--"Lawrence of Arabia"--adventurer, explorer, expert on what's now called the Middle East. Certainly every movie-goer has seen Peter O'Toole in flowing white robes, riding through the wide-angle desert with his coterie of Arab ...

FeaturesMay 29, 2017San Francisco,
Father's Day, wedding day, graduation--all important June occasions. And, of course, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, June 1st to 4th. This year, as in the 21 preceding years, the festival will feature a ...

Art & ArchitectureApril 28, 2017San Francisco,
Don't feel embarrassed if you suddenly burst out laughing while viewing the Contemporary Jewish Museum's exhaustive--but not exhausting--show of Roz Chast's work. There will be plenty of other viewers doing the same thing.
Chast, for the ...

FilmFebruary 27, 2017
Big cities in the warmer latitudes--Rome and Athens come to mind--all seem to have their cadres of "street cats": not-quite-feral felines who get by with occasional help from their human friends.
But no city I'm aware of has the kind ...

FilmAugust 23, 2016
Fritz Bauer isn't exactly a household name in the United States--nor, I suspect, in Germany, his birthplace. And yet it was Bauer, a Jew who fled Germany before the Holocaust and returned after World ...

FilmJuly 20, 2016San Francisco,
Some Bay Area movie-goers have called the annual Jewish Film Festival their favorite Jewish holiday, and you'd have to witness the excited queue outside San Francisco's Castro Theater on opening night to understand why. This year's 36th edition, running ...